Letters of August 15

Jenga and Dialectics: From Small Steps to Giant Leaps

Who would’ve thought that Jenga, a kid’s game, would be a great way to introduce dialectical materialism? In our recent study group, we illustrated the idea of quantitative change leading to qualitative change by collectively removing and stacking Jenga blocks. For every block that we removed we changed the quantity of the blocks.

After removing and stacking over twenty blocks, everyone was nervous and on the edge of their seats. For each block removed the tower became increasingly unstable, moving closer to a qualitative change. Eventually, after removing the 25th block, the tower came crashing down. It crossed a tipping point (dialectically and literally) and went from many quantitative changes to a qualitative change in an instant!

While everyone wanted to blame the last person for the collapse of the tower, we recognized that it was the collective effort of the group with the movement of each block that led to the tower’s qualitative collapse. The game clearly showed that small changes can lead to big changes.

Although we might not see qualitative changes as fast as we’d want to see them, small steps can eventually lead to giant leaps. So as communists we must realize that every march we go to, every study group we have and every person we win to the Party is like a block being nudged or removed from the Jenga tower of capitalism. Ultimately, the qualitative change will be the destruction of capitalism through communist revolution. 

Red youth

Hispaniola’s Tourism A KKKapitalist Killer

There is an underlying pain that belies the physical beauty of this island and friendliness of the people who comprise Hispaniola. Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) inhabit it. The goal of workers here should be communism. To reach this goal, international unity of workers with the leadership of the PLP is vital. No other way exists for our class to avoid the calamities capitalism imposes on us.

Tourism has become a major source of foreign investment and profit. DR has been a tourist destination for over 100 years. Only in the past 15 years has tourism so increased that it has become first an industry and then the largest industry in DR. With this growth, tourism also employs the largest number of workers in DR. Now impoverished Haiti wants to copy this model. Why?

A brief look at the tourist industry in DR and the impact it has on its workers in particular and the country as a whole can explain why. Today, almost 200,000 workers are in the “formal” economy. Many more work “off the books.” Most of the “informal” work in DR is in tourism. Those directly employed are subjected to low wages (RD$58/hour or about US$1.50/hour) with little or no benefits. Attempts to protest these conditions or unionize are squashed by the bosses.

Tourist-related taxes are a major source of revenue (6 percent of total tax revenue; 75 percent of this amount is from the Value Added Tax or VAT) for the DR government. The industry makes up 16 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 12 percent of national employment and is the main source of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) at 15 percent.

However, the tax revenue from tourist corporations are almost nil, due to special incentive schemes for this industry. Almost all tourist tax revenue comes from the individual visitor. Foreign investors receive a 10-year 100 percent tax exemption on investment income (profits), relief from impost duties (taxes), no VAT on construction materials purchased in DR, no taxes on real estate holdings and money transfers. Almost all tourist operations are foreign-owned, the great majority European.

To this poison, add widespread corruption between public officials and the private sector. The capitalists routinely buy off “public servants.” DR is known as an open investment regime by international finance. Except for Cuba, so are all other Caribbean nations.

A May 2012 report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) states that working conditions for DR tourist workers are similar to those of all the other Caribbean nations competing with DR for the tourist dollar: awful. 

Frank Moya Pons, a DR historian, showed that the result of these economic policies increase the severity of poverty. Now Haiti wants to follow this path. Haiti has similar economic problems as DR, only much worse. The rulers of Haiti, with their imperialist overseers in the U.S., see tourism as an important source of profit. As with DR, a major issue for foreign capitalists is how to lower the already very low Haitian labor costs ($3.75/day USD) to increase those profits on the backs of workers.

Workers in Haiti and DR must make crucial decisions. Will they allow themselves to remain in the trap of wage slavery offered by the tourist bosses or other capitalists? Or will they follow the path towards winning a society based on equality? We will try to struggle alongside our comrades in Hispaniola to win communism with international working-class unity.

Westchester Red

‘Seizing the Moment’ in the Harlem Rebellion

The great “Wanted for Murder” CHALLENGE front page (7/4) reminded me of a similar situation in 1964 and PL’s reaction to it. A cop had murdered a black teenager in cold blood which set off the Harlem Rebellion, the first of the big-city black uprisings. PLP’s forerunner PLM (Progressive Labor Movement) issued a poster with the cop’s picture on it entitled “Wanted for Murder, Gilligan the Cop.” It immediately became the rebels’ flag. They put them up on every lamppost and marched through the streets displaying CHALLENGE’s front page with that message on it, similar to our recent issue.

While PLM was a small, pro-communist organization and barely a year old, we soon became “the talk of the town.” We were the only group that supported the rebels. All the reformist leaders, black ministers and the corrupt “Communist” Party pleaded with the rebels to “cool it,” and condemned PLM as “adventurist.” But the rebels streamed into PLM’s Harlem headquarters, grabbing copies of the poster and CHALLENGE (our paper was barely a month old at the time) to plaster them throughout the city.

The ruling class was frightened as hell and its judge issued an injunction banning us from “congregating” in Harlem, between 110th St. and 155th St. in Manhattan, from river to river. In the teeth of this fascist act (a first in the city’s history), we decided to break the ban and hold an outdoor demonstration in the heart of Harlem. The cops immediately arrested our Harlem leaders and eventually indicted and convicted them for “inciting to riot” and a host of other ruling-class laws.

The bosses’ newspapers, editorial writers, politicians and TV stations became a chorus of attacks on PLM. Scores of PLM members were called before a Grand Jury on the basis that we had organized the rebellion (which, unfortunately, was untrue). We refused to cooperate with this rich man’s jury and many were jailed for contempt. The Harlem leaders and the PLM printers who had printed the poster were sentenced to prison terms and several young women comrades were jailed “until they talked” (which they didn’t). Through those comrades we exposed the Greenwich Village Women’s House of Detention as a House of Horrors, which eventually led to its closing.

PLM organized support rallies in other boroughs and PLM members were invited to speak on campuses throughout the country. The Vietnam War was raging at the time and our reaction to the Harlem Rebellion, plus other actions exposing this imperialist war, helped catapult us into the forefront of the anti-war movement.

So even though we were small in numbers, by “seizing the moment” PLM was able to influence tens of thousands about the nature of racism and capitalism, an important lesson for today.

One cautionary note: although hundreds responded to our actions, we erred in not collecting their names and phone numbers and therefore were unable to follow them up and bring them closer to, and into, the PLM, a mistake we can learn from.

A PLM old-timer